Saturday, October 22, 2011

The National Gramophonic Society, Part 2

Paul Juon

Here's the second of two posts to deal with the re-uploads of my National Gramophonic Society sets, featuring two electrical recordings of chamber works in which woodwinds are prominent. By far the lesser known of these works is the Chamber Symphony by Paul Juon (1872-1940). This delightful work, which despite its title is really an octet for piano, woodwinds and strings, was published as such in 1905 with a dedication to Julius Block, the agent of Edison who recorded so many Russian musicians on cylinders, including Juon himself. When I first uploaded this recording in 2007, I had done the side join in the first movement incorrectly, owing to the lack of either a score or a modern continuous-play recording. Since then I have had access to a score (which can be had here at the Internationam Music Score Library Project), and this error has now been corrected. Unfortunately the score also revealed that cuts had been made in the last two movements. Despite this, it's a fine performance, featuring Rae Robertson (one-half of Bartlett and Robertson) on piano, and Leon Goossens on oboe:

Leon Goossens also performs on the other work presented here, that of the Mozart Quintet for Piano and Winds, which features Kathleen Long as the pianist. The ensemble is rounded out by Frederick Thurston (clarinet), John Alexandra (bassoon), and Aubrey Brain (horn):

1 comment:

A lovely piece [Juon] by somebody you might otherwisenever have heard of -- aren't you glad you like 78s in spite of the ante-diluvian sound!!?? One of my mostprized possessions in my active collecting days alongwith The Curlew - the last NGS's.

About Me

I have been collecting 78-rpm records since childhood. In 2007, I began a hobby of transferring some of these to digital files, and in 2010 I established this blog as a forum for sharing these with a wider audience.

Downloading Audio Files

All audio files posted on this blog can be downloaded by clicking on the word "Link" at the appropriate place. The link will take you to a file hosting service, where you will be given a download link to a ZIP file. When your computer asks you if you would rather open or save this file, choose "save" and save it to your computer, then use an unZIPping program to extract the audio and other files.